OnClassical
OnClassical is a small independent record label based in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. It features classical music mostly for piano or chamber ensemble. History Founded in April 2003 by Alessandro Simonetto, pianist, producer and sound engineer, it enlists selected first-prize international contest winners and young talented musicians who do not hold exclusive contracts with managers or traditional recording houses. OnClassical was the first Italian label to produce, realize, distribute and sell recordings through the web and amongst the first to apply the new philosophy of Creative Commons. Its website started as a simple collection of classical music performances, still not grouped into albums or CD's. Only in January 2004 (second version) it evolved as an online record label and a mobile recording studio working with its own equipment. The third, of February 2005 (the 14th), and the last version, of July 2007 (the 14th), have always maintained the graphic unchanged (white blackground with yellow left border) and the main concepts tied to contents and licences. The new version With the most recent version of the site it have been introduced substantial innovationes such as the only publication of self-produced recordings (as realized by the founder) and a close selection of the better productions. In particular albums are now sold in CD uncompressed format (PCM / WAV, at 44.1 kHz * 16bit, with no protection) to avoid problems tied to the quality maintenaince due to the eventual decompression of compressed files (as MP3, Ogg vorbis) in the operations of burning-to-cd. Actually at OnClassical it is possible to download the exact copy of the master as originally produced. Moreover visitors may previously listen to the entire CD, compressed in low-quality MP3 files, which are Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, 1.0 licensed. Each album is sold at a price based on the visitors preference. An alert informs the purchaser that artists earn 50% from profits given to downloadings of their albums. Under the new release, the site also contains some new features such as the possibility to print high quality art-covers (available through PDF format) and the grant of permission to use all files derived from encoding of the high-qualityalbums on own iPods, Creative and portable devices. The quality OnClassical, however, claims for each recording a high standard of professionalism: the recordings are made with particular care, capturing only natural sounds which are not successively manipulated. Renowned piano manufacturers, Bösendorfer, evaluated Alessandro Simonetto's recording made at Capri isle, in which he reproduced a performance by the pianist Gianluca Luisi, as excellent work Bösendorfer to Alessandro Simonetto's recordings. Collection Today the catalogue has only 24 titles to choose and some new recordings, as the complete Bach's board works, signed by the Saarbrücken's Bach winner Gianluca Luisi, are announced. Amongst the titles there are some world first recordings such as the complete Album für die Jugend by Robert Schumann (of 70 pieces instead of the traditional 43) played by the Italian pianist Marco Tezza, and the album Verdi's Fantasie Brillanti with unedited violin transcriptions from Giuseppe Verdi's operas played by Luca Fanfoni, a Paganini competition winner. Curiosities The name OnClassical means OnLineClassicalMusic or Onabout Classical[ Music]). The motto of the label is A new Way to Think about Music where the word think is rotated by 180 degrees and coloured by green. The Artists * Accordion ** Massimiliano Pitocco (on 2nd v.) * Piano ** Maurizio Baglini (on 1st/2nd v.) ** Sandrine Erdely-Sayo (on 1st/2nd v.) ** Pierre Feraux (from the 3rd v.) ** Gianluca Luisi ** Aleksandra Mikulska (on 1st/2nd v.) ** Alberto Nosé (on 2nd v.) ** Antonio Palareti (on 1st/2nd v.) ** Giampaolo Stuani ** Marco Tezza * Harpsichord ** Stefano Demicheli (OnClassical compilation) * Guitar ** Pablo Lentini Riva (from the 3rd v.) * Violin ** Luca Fanfoni (from the 2nd v.) ** Gigino Maestri (on 2nd v.) * Percussion ** Saverio Tasca * Double-bass ** Daniele Roccato (OnClassical compilation) * (Chamber) Ensembles ** Duo Fanfoni-Savina ** TrisTango * Orchestras ** Stravinskij Chamber Orchestra * Choirs ** Don Kosaken Chor Wanja Hlibka (male soloists) ** Elysium (female vocal quartet) References Other references * Interview of Alessandro Simonetto by Enzo Fantin, IX/2005 * Citation on Creative Commons - Italy, VI/2006 See also * Copyleft * Creative Commons * List of record labels * Open source record label External links * The official site * The official weblog General and useful links * OnClassical at the Archive (free files in MP3 or Ogg formats) * [http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7614 OnClassical relaunches] at the Creative Commons' blog Category:Audio engineers Category:Italian record labels Category:Classical music record labels Category:Creative Commons-licensed works Category:Free music Category:Free websites Category:Independent record labels Category:Music websites Category:Music production Category:Netlabels Category:Online music stores Category:Record labels established in 2003 Category:Websites fr:OnClassical de:OnClassical